COOPERATION WITH QINGDAO

The ongoing cooperation between Sophia Antipolis Foundation and Qingdao National High-Tech Industrial Development Zone

COOPERATION WITH QINGDAO

  • August 2022

The Sophia Antipolis Foundation and Qingdao National High-Tech Industrial Development Zone
have much to gain by learning from each other as they each face their own innovation imperatives.

During 2021/22 the ongoing partnership between the two partners has helped advance cooperation in science, technology, and innovation. Situated in the south of the Shandong Peninsula and lying on the shore of the Yellow Sea, Qingdao is one of the 70 large and medium-sized cities of China.

Founded in November 1992, Qingdao National High-tech Industrial Development Zone (Qingdao High-tech Zone) was approved by the Ministry of Science and Technology. It is among the first batch of national high-tech zones approved by the Chinese State Council.

During the pandemic, the Sophia Antipolis Foundation has jointly organized the European First-class Parks Online Summit and the European First-class Science and Technology Parks (Qingdao Center) was established in 2020. Including the “Sophia Antipolis Innovation Road show on Artificial Intelligence and ICT Digital ”.

Also during the pandemic, the European First-class Parks Online Summit was held, and the European First-class Science and Technology Parks (Qingdao Center) was established in 2020.

This conference reflected the fact that both parties share common interests in fostering science and technology to solve the challenges of economic growth. Innovative companies such as Fair vision ( Digital and photovoltaic innovations for monitoring and analyzing competitive sports) Epicnpoc, experts in innovation, design and software engineering or Finwedge (experts in innovation, design and software engineering) have been showcased so as to find interesting partners within Qingdao.

Next step is to facilitate cooperation to take biomedicine and new-generation medical devices (intelligent manufacturing) as pillars for joint initiatives. Biomedicine and medical device industries will rely on the University of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences,) to help Qingdao High-tech Zone create a “Rehabilitation Bay” with international influence and domestic competitiveness.

The Sophia Antipolis Foundation and Qingdao High tech Zone will focus on the new generation of information technology industry and intelligent manufacturing industry focused for example on big data, robotics, and accelerate the creation of joint industrial clusters.

As soon as the pandemic comes to a halt the physical cooperation will restart and Qingdao is very keen on pushing forward the innovation agenda (There are about 230 foreign-invested companies in the High-tech Zone, of which one fifth are of EU investments.)

  • The cooperation with EUPIC – the EU Project Innovation Centre and the High-tech Zone is focusing on building a platform of exchange for cooperation with Europe.
  • Already more than 2,100 foreign governments and enterprises have representative offices in Qingdao.
  • A total of 160 Fortune Global 500 companies have invested in 309 projects in Qingdao.